


A Queen's Duty

by virginea



Series: Short Stories [2]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Gen, Missandei sweetie I swear someday I will write something with you alive, Past Jon Snow/Daenerys Targaryen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:00:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25585564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/virginea/pseuds/virginea
Summary: In these few days, her life becomes a tired shuffle of lights and shadows before her numb stare. Blurred figures with muffled and distant voices that dance around her in mocking fashion while an indescribable pain concentrated in her chest and consumes the heart that was left there, useless and beating for no reason.I have nothing to live for, her own voice says although she refuses to hear. She still has a destiny to fulfill, one last duty to serve."I am here to free the world from tyrants. That is my destiny and I will serve it, no matter the cost."
Series: Short Stories [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1872784
Comments: 24
Kudos: 25





	1. Chapter 1

**A Queen's Duty**

When I went to look at what had long been hidden,  
A jewel laid long ago in a secret place,  
I trembled, for I thought to see its dark deep fire-  
But only a pinch of dust blew up in my face.

I almost gave my life long ago for a thing  
That has gone to dust now, stinging my eyes-  
It is strange how often a heart must be broken  
Before the years can make it wise.

_"Dust"_ \- Sara Teasdale. 

**Daenerys (I)**

**Dragonstone**.

Daenerys takes a seat at her oakwood desk, an antique piece of furniture that was already there when she arrived and that may or may not have belonged to her family in the past. She has no certainty about these things anymore, there is nothing left in Westeros for her or the Targaryens. 

In these few days, her life becomes a tired shuffle of lights and shadows before her numb stare. Blurred figures with muffled and distant voices dance around her in mocking fashion while an indescribable pain concentrated in her chest and consumes the heart that was left there, useless and beating for no reason. 

_I have nothing to live for_ , her own voice says but she refuses to heed. She still has a destiny to fulfill, one last duty to serve.

She dips the tip of her pen into the inkwell and begins to write the words she has been wrestling with for long and painful weeks.

_I, Daenerys of House Targaryen, make known my withdrawal from the quest for the Crown of the Seven Kingdoms owing to the apparition of the Rightful Heir, Aegon Targaryen, son of Rhaegar._

_If my word is to be imperative to support the authenticity of said claim, I recognize Lord Jon Snow as my nephew and Rightful Heir to the Iron Throne._

When it's done, she feels a certain relief awash her, for she can't believe it was that simple. She presses the seal onto the newly spilled wax and waits for the liquid scattered on that piece of parchment to dry.

Only there the weight of this decision falls heavy on her shoulders.

***

_**Earlier that same night** _

_"Is that all I am to you? Your queen?"_

_Although Daenerys knew_ _the answer, she needed_ _to hear it coming from Jon himself._ _She had succumbed addicted to the torture that would come with it._ _Blow after blow, loss after loss, the pain had deprived all sense of rationality_ _and ignited her most primitive instincts. She knew he could no longer love her, whether it was out of disgust or fear_ _, or because he had never done it in truth, she was sure of his feelings._

_But Gods be damned, she needed him to make it happen at once._

_Despair took her last trace of dignity, her body clinging to his for life as if only he could save her. **Save me** , she begged him with that kiss. **Don't let me die like this**. _

_Her brave hero stopped her, standing still and staring blankly beyond her as his parted lips doubted the stern response she already known._

_It sparkled her rage that he left it unspoken between the two. Let it be like this, she decided._

_**She was hurting him** , she realized. And if something of what she knew (or thought she knew) about him was true, then not being able to do anything to help her was torture to him as well._

_"Fine," Dany said, pulling away from him. Accepting silence as the death sentence of this love that has taken everything from her. " **As your queen, I command you to return immediately to Winterfell and draw up clear terms with Sansa.** "_

**Torgo Nudho (I)**

He walks into the chamber again with a quiet step, finding the queen where he had left her: sitting in front of the hearth, watching the fire deep in regret. She's always been a woman of calm temperament at her privacy in contrast to the fierce attitude of her regal persona. He'd been observing her closely this night after discovering that the child in the kitchen had tried to put poison in her food. 

" _She_ told me of your plans. Sorry I couldn't give you that," she says, raising her eyes for a short moment to meet his and then averting them toward the fire. She sighed and rubbed her brow with her hands. " **You could never have gone**. Naath is inaccessible to those who are not native. She probably never mentioned the deathly butterflies because she has forgotten over time. But you can take her ashes to the Summer Islands. _You_ are from there."

Torgo Nudho nods. He has no more reason to leave. 

"This one has to serve his queen," he responds according to his renewed old mentality. He'll live by his duty to protect the queen. 

She looks at him intently. There are shadows under her eyes from exhaustion.

"Not for long, Torgo Nudho," she points out, dragging the words. "They're going to betray me." He stiffens. " The Starks. Tyrion Lannister. Jon Snow. All of them."

He has known for a while that this was a very likely outcome given the hostile reception of the people in that winter kingdom and all the losses she had endured without receiving anything in return, not even respect. 

"Then I will kill them all," he decides. 

He was ready to leave and take the city from the false queen, but if instead, they returned to the North, he would obey too.

"Not. You will not," she says, letting tears wet her cheeks and puffed up her eyes again. " **Do you hate me?** "

Her question baffles him. It makes him think, and Torgo Nudho does not wish to think anymore because that exertion takes him back to that place of suffering he cannot afford.

He just wants to obey.

"I do not," he responds with certainty, sucking in a deep breath. "But this one would've wanted for you to ask him something before." 

She starts to whine loudly and shakes her head. She had never cried before him and it makes him want to retreat. 

"This one wishes the same," she admits between sobs.

**Jon (I)**

_"As your queen, I command you to return immediately to Winterfell and draw up clear terms with Sansa_ _."_

 _A chill ran through his body when she said that. It was like meeting a sudden icy current after leaving a spring. Jon has been going in and out of this since he told her who he was in truth and mayhaps from a little earlier, from the moment they arrived at Winterfell. He knew he's overestimated the Great War and neglected this subsequent scenario._ _Daenerys had been through so much at this point he found himself unable to blame her for feeling angry at him and at the world itself._

_Had she taken Red Keep that day when he persuaded her not to, Missandei would be alive, Rhaegal would be alive. They shouldn't have trusted Cersei. She was right from the beginning._

_Jon's chest tightened. He just had to reach her and tell her that everything was going to be okay, that they were going to find a way to fix it. But he couldn't. Every time he tried, he just froze like the first time he saw White Walkers and the Night King. A tremendous terror invaded him, warning him of imminent danger with all those voices filling his mind._

_**Now she knows what happens when people hear the truth about you.** _

**_She is not her father._ **

**_No, she's far prettier._ **

**_You and I, we both know what she is about to do._**

_"We have to take the city," he hastened to excuse, seeking for whatever pretext that could serve to change her mind. Though he knew it was too late for that._ _"I can't leave my men." **I can't leave you like this** , he should've said, but he didn't know how without implying something else. "_ _I mean, Dany..."_

_She hurried to move away from him, across the room near the opening, where she had made her little shelter from the world._

_"I promise you I will not send your men into battle. Ser Davos will take care of them in your absence," she spoke, facing away from him._

_Jon walked toward her, not with the intention of nagging her further._

_"And yours?" he asked, fearful of being pushing the limits._

_"Only if necessary," Daenerys answered with a calm voice._

_"And you?"_

_" **Only if necessary**."_

_"I can not-"_

_"Yes, you can," she snapped, looking at him above her shoulder. " **A**_ _ **nd you will**." She turned around, sending daggers at him with a sharp stare. She lifted up her chin. _ _"_ _Lord Varys has woven enough for at least a significant part of Westeros to know who you are by now."_

_Now she knows what happens when people hear the truth about you, he heard again in his mind. You and I, we both know what she is about to do._

_No, he chided himself._ _She wouldn't. If there was only one thing Jon held on to, it was the certainty that_ _Dany would not. Dany was not her father. She was not mad. She was grieving and seeing her worst fears turning out true._

_And it was everyone's fault._

_"I shall leave in the early morn," he finally gave in. Accepting defeat._

_"You will leave now," she insisted._

_He understood that she wanted him away. Whether it was to carry out the unthinkable, or because he himself had given her reasons for wanting it._

_"Dany, please," he made an attempt._

_"If you don't go, **I'll go**."_

_He gulped the lump in his throat. Jon was annoyed with Sansa but more with himself for this. Still, he couldn't allow this to go any further. He had to find a way to appease Sansa's irreverence._

_"What if she refuses? What if the North refuses?" he couldn't help but ask her._

_She returned to her original stance,_ _leaning_ _against the stone column while responding without seeing him,_ _"You're going to make sure that doesn't happen. **Have a safe journey, Lord Snow.** "_

***

_**"I love you. And you will always be my queen."** _

_I love you but I cannot be with you as you want me to_ , is what Jon would've wanted to tell her. _I will always love you but I don't know anymore who I am_. 

He finds himself in the worst battle of his life just when he has believed for a moment that he would have a brief respite from all of it. Turning the same thought over, Jon looks at the ceiling of his cabin watching a small loosened cobweb dance in the air as he leaves out a breath. 

_What would Father do in my place?_ he wonders, ignoring the poisonous pang that spreads inside him every time he has to recant and remember that Eddard Stark is not his true father and never has been.

Up to this point in his life, Jon had been sure of a few things about himself and the great regard for his father's memory was one of them. However, that feeling is now corrupted by the truth of his origins. The man he proudly held as his voice and guide turned out to be not for Jon who he believed him to be, and while his actions might turn out to be an expression of loyalty to his sister and Jon's mother, as it was an act of love and protection, there is also in the same a twisted sense a resignation and carelessness that Jon had to pay for; Ned had condemned him to live like a bastard, with all that entailed and what ultimately fashioned him into the man he is today. For this, how much had he had to endure and survive? Was it fair to settle knowing that he saved his life, and for that reason, any hint of rancor should be appeased within him?

 _I do not know_. That is the only thing he can answer these days. The little he is sure of is that he has never wanted the Iron Throne. Power is one thing he has shied away from since he understood the great cost of it. He is no longer a child with aspirations of conqueror and honor, but a man devastated in every way whose path ahead is difficult to envision.

_Should I stay or should I go?_

The worst thing is knowing that this truth has also deeply damaged the person who Jon would never have wanted to hurt. In a futile attempt to restore Ned Stark's honor in the eyes of his daughters, he sparked a chain of actions and reactions that impacted in ways he would not have expected. He could still smell Lord Varys' burned flesh. And as much as that fate he had sought for himself, Jon couldn't help but feel guilty about it.

 _Now she knows what happens when people hear the truth about you_. 

Neither Daenerys nor Sansa cares about this as he does. Both have made their goals a priority, leaving them in the middle as a weapon against each other. This will be the last attempt to reconcile them both because after King's Landing he doubts that Daenerys will have more patience to grant, and if what she has warned him about is true, then all is lost, and defeating the army of the dead will have been in vain as Westeros will be a graveyard after all.

**Tyrion (I)**

" _Your brother was stopped trying to get past our lines. It seems he hasn't abandoned your sister after all. The next time you fail me will be the last time you fail me_."

With a resigned heart, he hurried to the Queen's soldiers' camp, tracking where they could have the prisoners.

He glimpses Ser Davos speaking with a Northern soldier. Tyrion slowly approaches him.

"Where is Jon?" he asks once the old sailor dismisses the man.

Ser Davos looks at him with a worried face. 

"The Queen sent him back to Winterfell."

Tyrion doesn't know if Davos is aware of the matter at hand, but they are running out of time. 

"Davos. I need to ask you a favor. You're the greatest smuggler alive, aren't you?

"I'm not gonna like this favor, am I?"

So Tyrion explains to him what he aims to.

"You can't be serious," Davos disapproves. "Not after everything that has happened. Everything that Cersei has done."

"It is not Cersei who interests me."

"Jaime then?"

"The child she is expecting."

At this revelation, Davos opens and closes his mouth, baffled.

"You want to save Cersei's child when she's killed one of Daenerys," he says with a judgemental attitude. 

"It is an innocent," Tyrion states. "And she sent Jon away because she knows he won't approve of what's going to happen these days." In desperation, he balances on his feet and his torso stiffens. "If we get Cersei out of the city in time, this will all end. There will be no reason for her to attack. Her conflict is with Cersei."

Only then does Davos understand what he means. Tyrion isn't sure that Daenerys won't retaliate but that would be up to her.

"A boat. _She_ will have to row. They will not get very far."

**Daenerys (II)**

**Dragonstone**.

She goes down to the beach of Dragonstone one last time to see off her soldiers. Torgo Nudho stands silently waiting for her to finish with the details.

"Do you understand what we are going to do?" she asks him. He looks at her intently but finally nods, and Dany believes to see a hint of pain in those dark eyes. "Very well," she says, resigned. She turns around to leave until she remembers one last thing. "And, Torgo Nudho," Dany calls him from the distance with a sincere smile on her face. "Thank you very much."

He and a small group of Unsullied set out for their destination. They know very well what to do. Meanwhile, she walks back to the castle, wearily climbing the steps and greeting the guards on the way with a forced smile. Her labored breathing reveals her sorrow has drained her body of all her strength. The simplest things become challenges at this point and Daenerys just wants to lie down one last time in her bed and let the dream take her away from that nightmare that was reality.

 _I've got nothing to live for_ , the voice in her head whispers again. This time she doesn't oppose it.

***

In the morning, she is clad in a gown with the colors of her house that she had been preparing for this day for a long time. However, she did not dress it with pride or enthusiasm for victory. No. The black of the gown is hardship and is mourning.

Daenerys finds herself at the end of the path as she started it: alone, desolate, and in no mood to continue. But she will continue. **_All Daenerys has left is her destiny._**

She has considered leaving the letters to Ser Davos but after learning that he has also betrayed her, Dany decides that she would rather trust luck than anyone else ever again. She then hands them over to the little girl, Martha, who was putting poison in her food just one night ago.

"You remember Lord Jon, right?" she asks in a soft voice. She caresses her chubby face, trying to calm the girl's nervousness. She nodded. "When you see him, give him this. Can I trust you won't open them?"

Dany knows that she is illiterate and too innocent. Again Martha nods.

***

"When all of this is over," she tells, stroking Drogon's snout, "I want you to fly away. Do you listen? Fly away. Don't let them get you, y love. Be free. You will be free."

Her last dragon son doesn't understand her. He makes a sound between a growl and a purr that she understands is a gesture of sadness. Drogon is also in a way, the last thing that gives her encouragement to go on. But Dany knows that together they will always be seen as a danger...a threat to be stopped. He had never been in as much danger as he has been by her side, so it is that conviction that drives her to follow through with this plan.

 _ **This world is better without me**_. _It has tried to push me out of it since I was born. It is time to accept that truth._

She knows it. She embraces it this time instead of shunning it.

 _I have a destiny_ , she repeats in her mind.


	2. Chapter 2

When I am dead and over me bright April  
Shakes out her rain-drenched hair.  
Though you should lean above me broken-hearted,  
I shall not care.

I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful  
When rain bends down the bough,  
And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted  
Than you are now.

"I shall not care" — Sara Teasdale 

**Arya (I)**

**King's Landing**

Sandor bangs the head of the Lannister soldier against a wall and Arya grimaces at the sound of the blast inside the helmet.

"Was it really necessary?" she asks him with a rough tone.

Sandor looks at her over the shoulder when he growls back his response, "I'd ask you the same thing."

Arya takes a deep breath and continues forward, her veil securely secured in case anyone recognizes her, though she didn't think that was possible, not even the northern soldiers did. Ahead of them, people huddle to get a place inside Red Keep as she fights the urge to tell them that this is the last place they should seek refuge.

No one had ever heard of Harrenhall?

Bedlam and hubbub helped them to move forward without further ado. They have chosen one of the streets parallel to the main, where the soldiers of the Golden Company march in all their futile splendor, as they wait for the imminent arrival of the Dragon Queen.

"Aren't you scared?" she asks Sandor, looking over at him. "Dragons are fire made flesh."

She knows that at the Battle of Winterfell, they fought with fire left and right as if she were just another battle partner. This was a whole different matter, Arya tells herself, influenced by her sister's very conviction that the taking of King's Landing would be a bloody and ruthless event.

"I don't feel anything," he replies.

 _Strange_ , she thinks. Arya could swear this was all about his brother. His revenge. As it is for her, isn't it? It is not the time to hesitate, she has to finish with Cersei because everything depends on that. While the Dragon Queen has now the same goal, Arya doesn't care what happens to the war for the Iron Throne. That is a fight that does not concern her.

Besides, Jon was sure of the goodness of his queen despite Sansa and her own misgivings about her. If anything, Arya believes she is rather helping to solve the matter quickly.

**Daenerys (III)**

Her hands clenched tightly on Drogon's spines, as she contemplated how easy it had been to finish off the Euron Greyjoy’s Iron’s fleet and the scorpions on the walls of King's Landing. She didn't even need her allies' soldiers, her own, nor Viserion or Rhaegal. All she had needed to regain the throne of her family was Drogon.

Enraged, she lands her last living child on the walls that surround and protect Red Keep. People down there shouted and run away in fear. She can feel her own anger boiling up in her chest.

 _Fire and blood_ , she thinks. Nothing has been worth the pain and sacrifices. She wants to destroy it, to release all her wrath on the stronghold her family had built and that was invaded by those who had destroyed them.

She is more a dragon than she is a person right there.

She is the Dragon Queen and nothing else.

Resolved, Daenerys flies Drogon toward the walls that face the main street.

People now seek to flee.

"Move," Daenerys orders to them, hovering with Drogon careful to crush anyone. While she doesn't feel anything for them, she needs them to leave and finish her duty. With a hard blow on his tail, Drogon manages to destroy the gates. She once again commands her son to soar above them and toward Red Keep, hovering over the castle like a crow stalking its prey. And like a decomposing corpse being prodded to watch worms wriggle out of it, Dany sees all of these people as nothing but remnants of rottenness.

She lets out a cry that no one down there will hear, like the cries that preceded it on the days and no one has come to appease. It is done. She no longer wants to keep fighting to show that she is different just to get the same result –she is sick of fighting.

Dany searches for the precise place to land, remembering the past when she used to do the same at the pyramids of Meereen. Even with its savagery and cruelty, Daenerys wished she had stayed there. She wished she had devoted the rest of her life to something worthwhile instead of this futile dream that has taken everything from her.

When her eyes land on an unprotected entrance, a wide-open window, Dany commands Drogon to come closer and allow her – at last – to enter Red Keep.

He squeals in disagreement, perhaps feeling and fearing what she is up to. Dany sobs and gives his warm scales a tender kiss, apologizing to him for this absurd decision. And it is that she no longer has anything to live for, and only one last duty to fulfill.

After giving his spines one last squeeze, Dany climbs off his back and leaps into a chamber.

**Arya (II)**

The moment the dragon flies over Red Keep, she thinks that was it, that her revenge was lost and she had come too late. However, when the Dragon Queen breaks through the gates to deconcentrate Cersei's human shield, that's really when Arya speeds up and thinks she must run and reach her goal before time runs out.

"Arya, wait!" Sandor shouts at her.

She is running now, desperately toward it. Her goal. The last name on her list. However, a strong blow stops her step. It's a blast. She looks up and sees a large green flame before a shadow looms over her and knocks her out.

When she wakes up everything around her is chaotic. She has been saved from a structure in the walls falling on her thanks to Sandor swooping in to protect it.

"I told you to wait, stupid girl!" he chides.

Arya ignores him again and stands up to watch as the majestic castle that stands above them is swallowed up by flames as the dragon lashes its body against it as if it is trying to bring it down.

"What is he doing?" she wonders. "What is _she_ doing?"

A hand on her shoulder snaps her out of her thoughts. She looks at it first and then at Sandor, whose face is also shocked. The fire, of course.

"Arya," he says her name apprehensively.

"Sandor," she replies. The two still stare into the green and red flames melting into the darkness of smoke and ruins.

Small shapes escape from that fire dressed in gray and blue. She frowns when she recognizes the Unsullied, who are exiting from the building towards the main courtyard where the people who have not yet escaped gather.

 _What's going on?_ she asks herself the same question over and over again.

**Daenerys (IV)**

The skin of her hands and face burns after having crashed on the granite floor of the chamber where she has landed. Daenerys braced herself on her elbows and looks up at the ceiling, where she sees a crack crossing it. The room and everything within it trembles with the force of Drogon flying over.

The place of her dreams. She is finally there but it has turned into a nightmare when she becomes aware of the cost she paid that has not been worth it in the end.

Daenerys gets up. Her hands open and close at her sides as she sucks in a deep breath and a wide array of emotions duel within her.

 _It was supposed to be the happiest day of my life_. 

Drogon's fierce call tells her he's feeling it too. Despair. The desire to go back in time, feeling powerless at the realization that it is an unattainable dream. 

_I still have a destiny_ , she tells herself. 

_I still have a chance_.

Daenerys strides toward her destiny then.

***

Red Keep's high halls are nothing like the dream. There is no magnificence in them, just long, stretched-out halls of high arches and chandeliers as in all the places she had been in the last few years that she had nurtured an idealized image of it all. And like the walls, everything was turning into the dust from which it had come first.

The Iron Throne awaits her somewhere in this pile of stones and rubble, she knows, and maybe even the path to it is less deadly than what she's trying to do but Daenerys has a thirst for blood that won't be quenched unless she herself drinks from it.

It is a long way to the dank cellar but there she finds them, Cersei Lannister and her brother and lover. She cries while embracing him, ignoring her presence and accepting the fate that she holds for them.

Her footsteps are loud enough for them to turn, staring at her presence in horror. Jaime Lannister pushes his sister behind him, protectively and a part of Daenerys' heart, the one that she still beat with hot blood, for a moment felt jealousy and melancholy.

Daenerys turned to find Balerion behind her. His skull. The size surprised her as it was no bigger than her Drogon.

"Please, mercy," he heard the Lannister plead. "She is pregnant..."

His words ring out hollow. 

"Where was the mercy to my father, to Elia, and to her children?" she turned to see them, her face cold and unsparing. "Where was the mercy to the world? To King's Landing? To Rhaegal and Missandei?"

Then Jaime Lannister, understanding that he would find no mercy in the woman his sister was so stupid to underestimate many times over, drew his weapon and launched a futile onslaught on her.

The rock-covered outlet behind them cracked open with a blast of fire that Cersei Lannister could only contemplate for a moment before being swallowed up by it.

Jaime watched stunned the scene before screaming as loudly as he could and running towards the fatal encounter.

Together they came into the world and together they left it.

**Torgo Nudho (II)**

His queen's orders were clear. Invade from the inside out. Annihilate all Lannisters without mercy. Keep the civilians away from Red Keep and leave the shores without waiting for her to resurface.

" _Drogon will depart. Do not follow him_."

He had accepted that she would not return. That she would run away. She would end her enemies and leave.

But then a voice in his mind spoke in words that sounded like Missandei.

_Go for her._

_Protect our queen_.

They had promised to finish off the queen's enemies before leaving and that promise could not be broken, even if she was gone.

Grey Worm orders the Unsullied to form a blockade to not allow any intruders to enter the fortress. Not that someone would want to when the castle was collapsing in on itself.

**Arya (III)**

Arya crouches down and with hands on her knees taking a shaky, shocked breath. Sandor has stayed behind her. Dead, unable to abandon her revenge as she has.

A sob escapes from her heart-stricken chest as she runs her dirty hands over her face, coughing from the dust that rises as stones fall from the sky.

Cersei must have been dead but she doesn't feel any satisfaction and that hurts her. It hurts because the emptiness is still there. The pain for those she had lost and would never get back.

Winterfell.

Jon.

Bran.

Sansa.

Gendry.

It is the thought of them that make her react and wake up from the stupor in time to move and dodge a huge chandelier that falls right in front of her, rousing around her a thick cloud of dirt that leaves her blind for until in the midst of it a ghostly contrasting image appears in her field of vision.

 _Daenerys_.

She knew that the Dragon Queen was in Red Keep but she'd hoped she would be atop her dragon and not inside it. 

What is she doing here?

 _The Iron Throne_ , she thinks quickly. _She has come to claim it_.

The dragon growls, startling her. 

Arya pushes herself a few steps around the fallen chandelier and towards Daenerys, although she doesn't understand why her dragon would be destroying the castle with her inside.

When she arrives, the walls have started to crack and the columns to shake. Something above was pushing the structures below. Her instincts tell her to flee in the opposite direction, safely, but she is mesmerized by the Dragon Queen walk towards the throne room — **not even flinching or looking back**.

***

_"This cannot be. The Iron Throne is yours by right," Arya recalls Sansa's lurid voice towards Jon._

_Arya looked at Jon then, who looked pained._

_"It's hers. It's her family's. It's...our family's."_

_It had broken her heart he'd said so._

_"Winterfell...will always be of the Starks. I fought to make it so. Nothing will ever change that." He took a breath and his shoulders shook. "The throne is hers. The Seven Kingdoms are hers. I'll fight to make it so." Jon's eyes looked into hers. "We can all live together. We all want the same. Cersei gone and peace in the realm."_

_Then Arya understood what he meant by it. He was not denouncing the Starks but trying to find peace at that juncture._

_"You're making a mistake," Sansa snapped, with a wave of her hand and a shaky voice that reminded Arya of Joffrey's tantrums._

_"Sansa..." Arya warned softly. Sansa responded with a guilty stare. She turned to ask Jon, "Do you love her?"_

_Jon's hesitation came not from a place of doubt, she supposed, but because he was still that shy, withdrawn boy._

_"Yes I do," he declared. "I love her."_

***

Another blow against the floor brings her back to the present and Arya realizes what is happening.

She is going to kill herself.

Arya moves as fast as she can towards the throne room but a column collapses in front of her and the last she sees is Daenerys on the throne.

**Bran (I)**

It is a beautiful image that he observes, poetic if anything. The Dragon Queen walking ceremoniously toward her destiny, her dearest longing, the end of the path that started off with a scared child.

Behind her, there is destruction, literally and figuratively.

Far from there, at sea, Jon paces uneasily inside his cabin. It distresses him something that he doesn't know exactly what it is.

He has seen it and yet has let it happen. He has done it for long and would continue to. Because that was also his destiny, the goal for he was made to. 

_But it doesn't feel right_ , says the boy's voice that sometimes he still allows himself to remember that he was. It's necessary.

 _High in the halls of the kings who are gone, Jenny would dance with her ghosts._ _The ones she had lost and the ones she had found and the ones who had loved her the most._

Dany takes a seat on her throne. The throne of Aegon. The Throne of her father. The one it must have been of Rhaegar.

 _ **Her throne**_.

 _And she never wanted to leave, never wanted to leave. Never wanted to leave, never wanted to leave_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cersei's death on the show always seemed stupid to me because, "hey, stand a few inches to the side and you can avoid that pile of bricks", but I always knew it would have anything to do with the valonqar prophecy -they skipped that part on purpose on the show. 
> 
> I wrote the scene of her death in this story inspired by this shot (https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-19852a41eabbc024e152669967b4e673.webp), which would have been a beautiful way to foreshadow her death (they use this sort of foreshadowing a lot in shows like Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul and I think it is magnificent).
> 
> Otherwise, I'm sorry that this is one of the saddest things I have ever written.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm just rambling.
> 
> This one crossed my mind after doing a quick comparison between the descriptions of Book! Daenerys and Show! Daenerys on their respective wiki fandom pages. Something that particularly caught my attention is the different approach that both characters have of the Iron Throne: while the Daenerys from the books sees it as a duty, the show gives a more "selfish" approach to Dany's motivations. 
> 
> I wanted to take the approach from the books and combine it with the final events we saw on the tv show. I think that combination results in a different outcome.


End file.
